Resources for:

The Green Dam Cyber-Censor Case

Primary Articles/Links

Overview.

The Wikipedia page on the "Green Dam Youth Escort" has a reasonable overview.

What types of internet content are blocked in China?

Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China
(March 2003) This is an academic analysis from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. The authors documented thousands of websites that were inaccessible in China, and they discuss the effectiveness of internet content regulation in China.

Big vulnerabilities in China's mandatory filtering software
(June 12, 2009) This is a short news article written by Ryan Paul of “ars technica” regarding the basics of the implementation of the Green Dam software. He discusses the risks of implementing a wide-spread internet filtering regulation.

(June 12, 2009) This Reuters article is about the criticism companies like HP and Dell may face in the U.S. if they decide to comply with the Chinese demands to install Green Dam internet filter software on all new PCs that will be sold in China.

Have there been other attempts to censor internet content or monitor use in China?

(October 2, 2008) This Reuters article is about an apparent breach of privacy between the Chinese version of Skype (TOM-Skype) and its users. The article states: “Skype apologized after a report revealed that the Web service monitors text chats with politically sensitive keywords and stores them along with million of personal user records….”.

(June 2, 2009) This article, on “Wired,” is about the Chinese government’s preparations to censor any references to Tiananmen Square in anticipation of the 20th anniversary of the protest. The article reports that references to Tiananmen Square found on Twitter, Flickr, and Hotmail will be censored.

(January 25, 2006) This older article from BBC news is about Google’s decision to “censor its search services in China in order to gain greater access to China’s fast-growing market.” Google’s new site for this purpose will be google.cn.

(June 15, 2006) This article, on “Wired,” claims that Yahoo.cn (the censored version of Yahoo in China) censors a larger percentage of websites that are unfavorable to the Chinese government that any other search engine used in China. This claim was made by Reporters Without Borders – a journalism advocacy group from France.

Have other countries attempted to censor internet content?

(June 18, 2009) This article, by Rebecca MacKinnon (in the opinions section of the Wall Street Journal), uses the Green Dam case as an example of a growing trend for national governments to control the internet content accessible within their jurisdictions.